Kate Williams

CHANTS of “reinstate Kate!” sounded outside Camden Town Hall as supporters of a sacked school teacher called on the council to intervene in a toxic dispute.

Protests and strike actions at the Children’s School at Great Ormond Street and University College Hospital are intensifying after Kate Williams was dismissed after 15 years working with schoolchildren in the two hospitals.

The 49-year-old told the New Journal this week how she had been made to feel “like a criminal” for standing up for her colleagues and students.

She is one of four teachers at the “outstanding”-rated school to be suspended last year over what the National Education Union (NEU) says is a part of a wider campaign of “victimisation” against its reps.

Explaining the work she does in the school, Ms Williams told the New Journal: “There is something called a Berlin Heart we have in hospitals, a device for children who are waiting for a heart transplant. So they are sitting there on a machine helping them stay alive while they wait for a replacement heart, or until another child dies basically.

“That’s the kind of children we are doing lessons with. You figure out what their passion is. You can read their faces. You get to know when they are in pain, when they need to vomit, when they are feeling sad or scared.

“You get to know them in a way that you may not as a mainstream teacher where you have 30 together in one class. It is so intimate. We become part of their family. And it’s such a privilege.”

Ms Williams recalled a recent pupil who was non verbal but became quite open thanks to having day-to-day school work.

She said: “She learned to read and write and she ended up writing this letter telling off Goldilocks for breaking into house, and gave it to her parents. Her parents gave it to the school and her school read it out at assembly.

“The girl who wrote the Goldilocks letter, she didn’t make it. But her mum always has that letter to remember her by.”

The demonstration outside Camden Town Hall

Ms William, who has been a teacher at the school for 15 years, said: “The day I was suspended I had to be escorted off the premises, hand over my ID card, my email taken away. I didn’t get to say goodbye to parents or teachers.

“I felt like a criminal. I felt ashamed.”

While details of the dismissal are set to be contested in an appeal, Ms Williams said she had raised colleagues’ concerns about the school’s new management after “very reluctantly” agreeing to serve as a union rep two years ago.

The NEU said its reps raised grievances appropriately, but have since faced an unfair backlash.

It is the first time in the school’s 80-year history that staff have gone out on strike action.

Ms Williams said she would struggle to find another job in education and her “entire career has gone up in smoke”, adding: “I was sitting there at the Job Centre, silently weeping.

“It was humiliating to be a 49- year-old with a masters degree, and half-way through a doctorate, to be out of work. I am a working-class person. I trained to be a teacher with a three and five year old. I had to wake up at 3am to do my essays. The reason I went in was I was passionate.

“Now my money has stopped in March. I don’t have any savings. I’m having to borrow money.

“The education system is so wrecked I don’t think I can remain in it. I am 50 this year. It will be hard to make a new start.

“But my main concern right now is the children in those hospitals having the education they are entitled to. They should be having excellent education, they shouldn’t be having the bare minimum.

“Until that is resolved, I can’t move on.”

There have so far been 28 days of strike action by the NEU at the school since last September.

Speaking outside the Town Hall on Monday, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, said: “This hospital school that takes care and provides an outstanding education has been a consistently outstanding place to work.

“It is the most disgusting behaviour that I have ever come cross. This council should be so ashamed – they can’t even engage with this dispute.”

The council has so far refused to provide any meaningful intervention to resolve the dispute.

A spokesperson for the governing body said: “We are committed to ensuring that all staff at the school are safe, whilst ensuring that all matters are investigated thoroughly, independently, and fairly, in line with internal processes. We are unable to comment further on these confidential matters at this time.”